April is going to be a big month for Star Trek on Blu-ray. First up is season three of Star Trek: The Next Generation coming on April 30th, along with a special stand-alone release of the two-part episode “Best of Both Worlds” on the same day. In addition on the same day Paramount is releasing a number of Star Trek feature films that were previously only available in box sets. And finally “Best of Both Worlds” is also getting a theatrical release. Get all the details below.

Confirming our report from a month ago, Star Trek The Next Generation Season 3 on Blu-ray has been officially announced. It is due in stores on April 30th. As with the previous two season releases it will include every episode meticulously remastered in HD along with new special features, including an “Inside the Writers’ Room” featurette with Ronald Moore, Brannon Braga, Naren Shankar and Rene Echevarria (and moderated by Seth MacFarlane). There will also be the usual three-part documentary on the making of the season, blooper reel and new audio commentaries. (tomorrow TrekMovie will have full disc-by-disc details for the set). The set retails for $130 and is already available for pre-order at Amazon – discounted to $91.

Also confirmed from our report from last month is the release of a separate release of the two-part episode “Best of Both Worlds,” cut together as a single feature. This Blu-ray will also include brand new extras and an audio commentary and even a gag reel. The retail prices is $28.88, and it isn’t yet available for pre-order.

Box art for Best of Both Worlds Blu-ray showing fold out cover

Best of Both Worlds Theater Event April 25

The remastered feature-length version of “Best of Both Worlds” will be shown in one night only theater screenings on April 25th. In addition to the two-part episode they will be showing a special behind the scenes feature. You can pre-order tickets now at Fandango and Cinemark Theaters. Note: This event hasn’t been officially announced yet so there may be more theaters to be added.

Not to be outdone by CBS, Paramount is also issuing some Star Trek Blu-rays on April 30th. Today Paramount listed solicitations for individual Blu-rays for a number of the films that were previously only available as part of the Original Series or Next Generation box sets released in 2009. April 30th will see the releases of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Star Trek: Generations, Star Trek: Insurrection, and Star Trek: Nemesis. The remaining movies (II, IV, VI and First Contact were all released as individual discs back in 2009).

These all appear to be the same cuts that were released in the 2009 box sets. However, there is some question over Star Trek: The Motion Picture as the solicitation text describes it as a “newly restored, Director’s Edition.” This would be big news as the version released in 2009 was an HD remaster of the theatrical release and not an HD version of Robert Wise’s director’s cut which was released on DVD. TrekMovie contacted Daren Dochterman who worked on the Director’s Cut and he said he had no knowledge of any work being done for the Blu-ray. This is important as all the new effects would have to be redone in HD for the transfer. It is possible that Paramount mistakenly used the text from the Director’s Cut DVD set without realizing the difference. TrekMovie has reached out to Paramount Home Entertainment to get clarification.

UPDATE: TrekMovie has confirmed with Paramount Home Entertainment that the Star Trek: The Motion Picture release on April 30th will be the same theatrical cut that was in the 2009 Original Motion Picture collection. The “newly restored, Director’s edition” blurb text on the press site was an error.

If TMP D/C was getting a new HD transfer, they would have made a big deal about it. Considering that one of the important people knows nothing about it and this is the first we’ve heard about it, its not likely.

I’m not too thrilled that the feature length BOBW is only available as a stand alone. I’ll buy it, but only if the price is right. It needs to drop to around $10 or so for me to consider it. I’m buying seasons 1-7 on blu-ray as they come out. Is it really necessary to get me to double dip for feature length versions?

I thought 98% of the entire body of work TNG delivered was boring uninspired drek…however, The Best of Both Worlds falls into that 2% that truly delivered the goods. Sadly, an exception to the rule, and a sad reminder of the series’ true, mostly unrealized, potential. I wouldn’t touch the season sets with a 10′ pole, but this exceptional two parter will probably make its way to my DVD shelf. As far as TMP goes, if it’s the director’s cut, I’ll be pleasantly surprised, but I’m not counting on it.

I have a podcast of the producers/animators of the Robert Wise cut, and they clearly say that they are doing the effects in high quality for future releases. This was a podcast that was available at ST.COM and iTunes too (no longer available on those sites).

Does anyone else have this? It is stated within the first 20 minutes or so of the podcast.

@ Mike C. — Sorry dude, those involved with the project such as Daren Dochterman have said time and again they rendered it at 480p. For the time that was “high quality”.
Here’s one such comment from Daren about not rendering in HD: http://blog.darendoc.com/?p=473#comment-245

I know the podcast/commentary you’re talking about. They said they HOPE to get the chance to upgrade – really depends on whether the studio wants to spend the coin necessary to do it. It’s not the giant project that TNG-R is, but it’s also not small, either.

Perhaps Mr. Dochterman(one of the gentleman who did all that wonderful work) will pop in talk about it. He comes in from time to time.

Paramount is not good about respecting their film library. This is the studio that had to be shamed into restoring the Godfather films by Steven Spielberg(who did it at the behest of Francis Coppola, whom Paramount was ignoring).

Doesn’t surprise me in the least that the Trek features are getting the short shrift. The transfers for the last set(with the exception of TWOK) were heavily DNR’d and needed a lot more love than they got.

The directors cut of TMP was retarded. Loads of good stuff trimmed out, and bad CG thrown in for no reason.
In fact, I find the BluRays of Trek to be wholly unsatisfying. After getting used to the longer versions of the movies on DVD, to go back to the gutted ones is a huge step backwards. I feel truly ripped off.

Season 3 is definitely when TNG hit its stride and “The Best of Both Worlds” two-part episode is certainly in the Top 3 all time, along with “All Good Things,” and “Yesterday’s Enterprise.”

I still remember that cliff-hanger ending and the anticipation of waiting for the second part. And to think we did that waiting with no Internet — no opportunity to trade ideas and discussion of what might come next. The waiting was almost unbearable.

@27 — True that! I had forgotten that they had to be shamed into The Godfather. It’s a good thing they got a good restoration team on it too (Robert A. Harris and his team) instead of just slapping them on discs.

@28 — I also agree with you about the lack of longer director’s editions from the DVD era. It’s very obvious Paramount took what they had ready without the need for any real work to be done and threw them on Blu-ray in 2009 as a cash in for the Abrams movie out the same year. They could have had theatrical and extended editions on the same disc pretty easily thanks to seamless branching, you see it quite often with other movies from other studios. Once again, showing CBS cares, they did branching for TOS-R, while Paramount did nothing of effort for the movies.

27 Tell me about it,
Paramount Home Video even licensed out hundreds of previously released on bluray cataglog titles to WB as of Jan 1st this year.
Thats why you are starting to see long out of print Paramount titles on the shelf again for only 9.99. Same disc same packaging just with a WB sticker/Barcode stuck on the old paramount bar code..

Of course Star Trek was not part of those Licensed out to WB, though a number of high profile Paramount big titles were

@ 33 — Yeah I saw that news and actually kind of hope that’s a blessing, since Paramount obviously doesn’t care much about it’s back catalog, I’m hoping their deal with WB (who very much care about their catalog) might get the WB to help do some restorations for new editions. Slim chance, I know…

@14 Agreed. I did one of my examples of what a newly-recreated Hi-Def Director’s Edition of “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” would look like in the near future, like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_F09jwNJtk

Ashame The Motion Picture is the theatrical cut. I have the director’s cut on DVD and the pacing is much better on that. I would love to see the special edition DVD’s released as Blu-Rays. I haven’t bought the Blu-rays for the movies because of that. I assume someday the special editions will get the blu-ray treatment so I’ll just wait — not to mention the look and sound of the special edition DVD’s with the progressive scan on my DVD player actually look very good– I haven’t had the itch to upgrade them to Blu-Ray.

I hope that Paramount get off of their collective arses and sort out getting the TMP DE effects re-rendered at 8K resolution and then they will be ready for all the new video formats for the coming decade.

Seriously though, how hard can it be? As long as the original 3D source files exist, all we are talking about is a rendering pass at the appropriate resolution.

Heck, I could probably do it on my home PC, as long as I had the appropriate software.

In fact I hereby volunteer to do it.
I have an Intel Core i7 4GHz CPU, 32Gb RAM, Radeon HD 7970 graphics card, top end ASUS motherboard, Windows 7 Ultimate. 3 x 22 inch monitors.
I can also run virtual PC`s on this rig.

I love the TNG theater events, and that just happens to be my birthday! I’m glad they’ll be doing both parts, as it would be kinda silly to split them up into 2 nights, one for season 3 and one for season 4.

You’ve got people like yourself offering to do the work for free! and I bet
the still won’t do it. ST TMP DE DVD made more money than expected in 2001 when released, so why not make more?
The same goes for the Blu-Rays released in 09, Paramount know that they were not well received, so what do we get cash – in re-releases with no change in quality!
Don’t get me started on STV TFF, Paramount could spend the $400,000
on new SFX and make more money. But they just don’t seem to like making money – do they??